Author Archive: Rosi Efthim

I’m in the Bridgeport, CT HQ of Lamont for Senate. It’s a storefront print shop and we’ve been putting out canvass crews and phone banking for hours in a tight, wild space, dodging vast reams of paper, machinery with pointy things and styrofoam cups all over the floor. There are cookies and voter lists on every table surface. All the land lines are in use (it’s really loud in here). And at least two dozen people are standing outside where the cell reception is better.

Linda Stender’s website has a nice redesign that’s just being rolled out now. If you missed it the first time around, you can see video on the front page there of Linda Stender on CNN’s Larry King, taking Ann Coulter out to the woodshed for her disgraceful recent slurs on New Jersey’s 9/11 widows. A slam-dunk.

Also there’s a nice video clip of Ellen Malcolm, the EMILY’s List President, about why Stender was a candidate worth endorsing.

Blue Jersey raised some solid on-line campaign contributions for Stender just before the March 31 FEC filing deadline. Thank you to all who helped that effort. We’ll be making that ask again this week as the 2nd Quarter FEC filing deadline approaches. And you can always help fuel the Stender campaign – she deserves it – by contributing to her campaign through Blue Jersey’s Act Blue page.

EMILY’s List, America’s largest grassroots political network and financial resource for women running for elective office just, minutes ago, endorsed Linda Stender who is running for Congress in the 7th Congressional District.

EMILY’s List = Early Money Is Like Yeast. It raises the dough!

Hey, this is just HUGE news. Assemblywoman Stender is widely seen as New Jersey’s best opportunity both to send a woman from here to Congress – and – the best opportunity to snatch a congressional seat in NJ from the Republicans.

Wearing a bright yellow button saying UNION YES – WAR NO, Carol Gay stepped to the podium at a Candidate Forum in Beechwood last night to make her first speech as a candidate for United States Congress. Gulp.

Yeah, well. You might have a bemused look on your face too if you just found out you were running for Congress 8 hours ago. She handled herself just fine.

Gay is challenging the mighty Chris Smith in the 4th CD, who’s been there so long he’s got his name scratched into the door (I jest of course, he was sworn in in 1981 at just 27). The 4th spans Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth, and Ocean counties.

There’s suddenly a lot of buzz coming out of the Linda
Stender for Congress office. She’s having a really great week and her fundraising, which has always been solid, is suddenly justâ€¦taking off. A huge goal is suddenly in reach. And she needs our help.

Incredibly, with just 48 hours left before the filing, Stender is just $15,000 from crossing the March 31 Viability Threshold; that’s the number (and it’s big) set by national organizations like DCCC and Emily’s List to consider you viable for funding on a national level. This is huge; we need 15 seats to Take Back Congress, and one of them could be the first woman in the NJ Congressional Delegation in years.

If you’ve been thinking about giving to Stender, this is the moment. Every dollar you give now is effectively multiplied if Stender’s growing national-profile results in added resouces from national groups pouring into New Jersey to turn the reddish 7th CD bright blue.

Stender needs to raise $15,000 by Friday. Blue Jersey has set up a netroots ActBlue page to track how much the netroots can raise. You can contribute directly through this form:

Linda Stender (NJ-07)

$

Stender’s got the stuff: She’s already raised $300,000, more than the 2004 & 2002 Dem candidates combined raised by March 31. And the lady can win an election: She’s been a Mayor, a Freeholder and is now Deputy Speaker in the Assembly. This candidate is worth your bucks.
Help the netroots effort to launch Linda Stender national.

If you’re watching the Academy Awards right now, you might not know that there’s a movie about New Jersey politics up for an Oscar.

Yep – Street Fight is up for an Oscar for Best Documentary. It’s about the 2002 slugfest between incumbent Newark mayor Sharpe James and his insurgent, meteoric Rhodes Scholar challenger Cory Booker. It’s a matchup we may indeed see again this year, and this time it may be Booker who has the last laugh.

First-time director Marshall Curry is there right now, at his first Oscars, waiting for the docs to be announced. Good luck Marshall!

I should mention Street Fight iis up against March of the Penguins…um…. one of the most successful docs in history.

Next Wednesday night, when Ron Rice, Jr. walks into Essex County DFA’s Candidates Forum, he’ll be walking in the door as a nationally-endorsed DFA candidate.

In an announcement entitled “Six Rising Stars,” and sent across the country this morning, national Democracy for America Chairman Jim Dean, wrote this about Rice, a candidate for Newark City Council in the West Ward:

In 2002 he ran for councilman-at-large and received more votes than any previous first-time candidate in the history of Newark. His campaign is about changing the culture of city politics, empowering residents through education, and community control of all city development.

There’s s a guy named Dave who went to a great deal of trouble to write his own name in under the OTHER option in NJ for Democracy’s on-line poll asking who Corzine should pick for the Senate. And a few people really really like Bruce Springsteen (duh).

Other than that, we’re comfy the poll is pretty clean: 872 responses, open for one week, designed to discourage interference by accepting only one vote per IP address. We don’t claim it was scientific, because it was on-line. Full results here: www.njfordemocracy.org.

Codey – who may be dropping out today – was the numbers winner but is it Rush Holt who really scored here?